LETTERS: MORE NORTH COUNTY, APRIL 20, 2013

Chaplains and the military

As a footnote to the article about Army Chaplain Emil Kapaun receiving the Medal of Honor (“Medal of Honor for Korean War priest,” April 7), it bears mention that in the history of the United States to date only four military chaplains have been awarded the Medal of Honor, and all of them were Roman Catholic priests. Kapaun will make it five Catholic priests.

Regarding Catholic chaplains today, there is an untold story. The Navy, which also supplies chaplains to the Marine Corps, is doing nothing to retain active-duty Catholic priests as chaplains to serve the sacramental needs of Catholic military men and women. Ask why there is no active-duty Catholic chaplain at Camp Pendleton? Nor one assigned to Miramar. This is another scandal whose victims are military personnel.

Kevin Kennedy

Escondido

More on God debate

What an interesting letter from Pat Hall (“Read a book,” April 6). He or she claims they “would have no problem with religious beliefs if they stayed in the heads of believers.” Can this person comprehend the hypocrisy of publicly airing their atheistic viewpoint after making a statement like that?

Pat thinks religion is all about “preying on human fears,” while it truly is about praying on human fears. I also disagree that “there is no evidence for a God,” but Pat might just have to take that on faith.

Bill Lane

Escondido

In regard to Pat Hall’s comment that “there [are] mountains of evidence that there is no God” (“Read a book,” April 6), I would like to ask Mr. (or Ms.) Hall to provide one simple shred. No disrespect intended, but an argument is meaningless when it relies on generalizations (“religion doesn’t allow for scrutiny”) and ad hominem attacks (“Wasn’t Mary paying attention in school?”) yet doesn’t provide any real evidence itself. I invite you to bring on the evidence that there is no God, and we’ll scrutinize it.

Heidi Paul

Escondido

This is a response to “Read a book” (Letters, April 6) and mountains of evidence that there is no God.

I would like to refer you to the several articles of late about the “Brainy Initiative.” It seems that we are going to spend millions of dollars and years to map the brain to gain an understanding of how it works.

One popular explanation of how this all came about is that in the beginning, life on Earth consisted of single cells suspended in the primordial sea, accidentally coming together while sloshing around in this magical environment. Now, we will be spending all this time and money just to find out “how it works,” not how it was thought of, designed and built. This had to be done by an extreme intellect, and I call this designer God. That this extremely complicated device happened by chance is pure hogwash.

So I suggest that you, too, read a book, and the one I suggest is called the Bible.

Duane Ericson

Oceanside

The biblical position of creation is based on divine revelation, which is found in the Bible’s first book, Genesis. Divine revelation is God’s communication of himself to humanity of truths that man is incapable of discovering by himself. People who think that this is “just made-up” are spiritually blind. Creation itself testifies to an intelligent designer. Religion and science are not two opposing world views, but, rather, complementary. History is full of many brilliant scientists who believe in creationism. Freeman Dyson (world-famous physicist) wrote “science is not a collection of truths; it is a continuing exploration of the mysteries of divine revelation.”

Nick Lucia

Escondido

Most of the fathers of modern science – Francis Bacon, Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton – derived their intellectual furniture from the Bible. They took the biblical view that the universe, while made and sustained by God, is distinct from deity, and is an objective, knowable reality worthy of systematic, coordinated study. Advocates of the 18th century Enlightenment made the unnecessary assumption that if we can describe natural phenomena in terms of laws and mathematics, we eliminate the role of God in the universe. In contrast, Kepler described science as “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

Howard Killion

Oceanside

Corporate boards are culpable, too

In response to “A look back at some major CEO flameouts” (Business, April 16): Why would a responsible manager fill a difficult position with someone with no or little experience? Yet many poor-performing corporations do it quite frequently. It’s the same flawed thinking that “one size fits all.” It’s the same philosophy of hiring national consulting firms to fix big corporate operating issues.

The problem is often related more specifically to a lack of succession planning and corporate boards not understanding the business. Boards often resort to contacting a major headhunting firm for candidates without regard for in-house talent who understand the problems firsthand.

A successfully run business should always be grooming not one, but possibly two or three people capable of taking on the responsibility of leadership. Succession planning is based on tangible performance of increasing responsibility. How can an outside hire run the company with no direct operating experience or knowledge of staff and expect to be successful? They often add to the problem by concluding that existing management needs to be replaced and bring in their own people, who know even less about the business. This often destroys loyalty and commitment.

Boards should be focused on the necessity of grooming successful executives and insuring this is a strategic objective of the company.

Peter J. Malaspina

Cardiff

It’s not too late

Re: “Eradicating bigotry” (Letters, April 15): The key part in this equation is the absence of God regarding the content of these discussions. If you are willing to look in the Bible, you will find the correct answers: homosexuality (both male and female) is forbidden; multiple spouses are forbidden. If you are willing to recognize God, you cannot accuse him of bigotry. He made you and the entire universe and He gave us the rules to live by. Life would be very simple if we followed his ways, as our forefathers did when they created America.